Preparation of a fruit pudding

ABSTRACT

A method for preparing a fruit pudding in a two-step process. A pudding base mixture comprising water, sugar and starch is blended together into a homogeneous mix and thereafter sterilized. Separately, an edible acid-flavoring base is prepared and separately sterilized. The separately sterilized pudding base and acid-flavoring mixture are thereafter mixed together to form a fruit pudding. The pudding is aseptically canned.

United States Patent [1 1 Stewart, Jr. et al.

Nov. 6, 1973 [54] PREPARATION OF A FRUIT PUDDING [75] Inventors: AubreyP. Stewart, Jr.; Clarence R.

Dreier, Jr., both of Corning, Iowa [73] Assignee: Allied ChemicalCorporation, New

York, NY.

221 Filed: Aug. 27, 1971 211 Appl. No.: 175,741

52 us. Cl. gggi), 426/399 [51] Int. Cl A231 1/14 [58] Field of Search99/139 [56] References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,563,996 8/1951Edgar 99/139 Kerr 99/139 Cooper et a1. 99/139 X Primary Examiner-AlvinE. Tanenholtz Assistant Examiner-J. M. Hunter Attorney-Jonathan Plaut[57] ABSTRACT 5 Claims, No. Drawings PREPARATION OF A FRUIT PUDDINGBACKGROUND OF THE DISCLOSURE The instant invention is directed to amethod for preparing a fruit pudding. More specifically, the instantinvention is directed to a process for preparing a fruit pudding inwhich a pudding base and an acid flavoring mixture are separatelyprepared and sterilized prior to being combined to form the fruitpudding.

Fruit puddings have customarily, in the prior art, been prepared bymixing together water, sugar, starch and edible acids. To this basic mixwas added, in varying amounts, a vegetable fat or oil,-salt andflavoring and coloring ingredients. The mixture, in the prior art, isstirred together and sterilized at a temperature of about 200 F. Thesterilized mixture is thereafter poured intocans and allowed to coolwhile in the-can. A more recent innovation has been the cooling of thesterilized mix prior to canning and thereafter aseptically canning thesterilized pudding.

The procedure enumerated above, although commercially employed includescertain disadvantages that increase the cost of the process as well asresult in a less palatable product than should be the case. The use ofstarch in the mixture has as its purpose the maintenance of a suitablyhigh viscosity of the resulting pudding. However, the effect of a heatedacid on starch is to deactivate the starchs thickening property. Thus,in

the prior art, when the combined mix is sterilized, the elevatedtemperature of the mix, in the presence of the acid ingredient resultsin a partial deactivation of the thickening effect of the starch on thepudding mixture. To compensate, food processors add an excess of starchto get the desired viscosity of the pudding. The cost of this additionalstarch adds to the cost of making the pudding. Moreover, the puddingoften takes on an undesirable starchy flavoring.

An additional disadvantage in the prior art method of fruit puddingpreparation is the corrosive effect on the processing equipment. This iscaused by the presence of the edible acid, especially at elevatedtemperature.

This is important in view of the relatively large size equipmentrequired in the process of the prior art. In order to prevent corrosion,large additional costs may be incurred by employing corrosion resistantequipment. Alternatively, if no such precautions are taken, the expenseof maintaining the large size equipment adds significantly to thepreparation costs.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The instant invention is directed to a processwhich overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art method of preparing afruit pudding. Basically, this is accomplished by separately processingand sterilizing the pudding base, that is all the constituents of thepudding except for the edible acid and flavoring. In this way', theadverse effect, on the starch, by the edible acid at elevatedtemperatures is removed, resulting in a more palatable product producedat a lower cost.v In addition, the separate processing and sterilizingequipment used to process the edible acid flavoring mixture is smallersized so that the cost of providing corrosion resistance for thisequipment is lower, resulting in lower capital costs for the processingequipment. Also, in the event of corrosion, the replacement costs arecorrespondingly reduced.

A mixture comprising sugar, starch and water is blended and sterilized.A flavoring mixture comprising an edible acid, flavoring and water isseparately blended and sterilized. The two separately processed mixturesare cooled and are thereafter mixed together to form a sterilized fruitpudding, which is thereafter preferably aseptically canned.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION A base mixture for a fruit puddingis prepared by blending sugar, starch and water together. In manyapplications, a vegetable fat or oil may also be added. In addition,lesser amounts of salt and coloring agents are included in the mix. Thecomposition of the base mixture in terms of the percentage of each ofthe abovementioned ingredients varies in accordance with the flavor andquality of the fruit pudding to be produced. Certain percentages for keyingredients, although not limiting in the sense that fractions outsidethese ranges are inoperable, are preferably within prescribed ranges.Thus the percentage of starch in the base mixture is usually in therange to produce a final fruit pudding with a starch concentration of 3to 7.5 percent by weight. More preferably, the starch concentrationranges from 4 to 6 percent by weight. The ingredients are mixed togetherto form a homogeneous mixture. After mixing, the base mixture is heatedto a temperature in the range of about F. to F. This heating'stepreduces the steam load in the subsequent sterilizing procedure whichwill be described below. The temperature of the base mixture ispreferably maintained below F. At a temperature greater than 155 F. thestarch constituent is activated. That is, the starch granules being toswell. In this condition, the starch is more readily sheared whensterilized and tends to lose its effectiveness.

The heated base mixture is next sterilized. The sterilization step inthe instant invention is preferably by steam injection. In steaminjection sterilization, the base fruit pudding mixture is heated to atemperature in the range of about 250 F. to 300 F. for a period of l to300 seconds by the injection of steam. More preferably, steam injectionheating results in an increase in the base mixture temperature to about280 F. for a period of l to 60 seconds. Although steam injectionsterilization is preferred, other methods of sterilizing the basepudding mixture may be substituted.

In a preferred embodiment, the hot, sterilized base mixture is conveyed,immediately after sterilization, into a flash tank. The flash tank isprovided for the dual purpose of cooling the mixture as well as removingexcess water contained in the mixture. The mixture is cooled to atemperature in the range of about 130 F. to F. The excess water in theoriginal blend as well as water added due 'to any condensation ofinjected steam is herein removed.

In a separate procedure the acid flavoring mixture is prepared. The acidflavoring mixture comprises a combination of an edible acid, flavoringand water. Once again, the relative composition of the constituentsvaries with the type and quality of fruit pudding to be produced. Ofcourse, the flavoring added is dependent upon the type of fruit puddingto be prepared. For example, a lemon flavoring is employed when lemonpudding is to be made. It should be appreciated that any one of manyfruit puddings may be produced merely by varying the flavoring employed.In all cases the procedure to be described below is independent of thefruit flavor used. Moreover, the composition of the pudding is almostindependent of the flavoring employed. In most cases, a change in thefruit flavoring employed will make necessary, at most, a small change inthe percentage of the edible acid employed. In this regard, it ispreferably that the percentage of edible acid in the final fruit puddingbe in the range of about 0.2 to 1.0 percent by weight of the pudding.More preferably, the range of edible acid is between 0.4 to 0.5 percentby weight. In terms of the resultant pH of the pudding, the edible acidconstituent should result in a pudding having a pH of below 5, andpreferably 3.5 to 4.2. The acid-flavoring mixture is sterilized uponcompletion of the mixing of the ingredients. There is no need to preheatthe acid-flavoring mixture because of its relative small volume comparedto that of the base mixture. Thus, the heat load is correspondinglyreduced to the point where the pre-heating step does not involvesignificant savings in the heat sterilization step. The acid flavoringmixture is preferably steam sterilized to a temperature in the range ofabout 180 F. to 200 F. for a period in the range of about seconds to 300seconds. Again, sterilization by steam injection is preferably employed.

Immediately after sterilization of the acid-flavoring mixture, themixture is cooled. The cooling procedure, preferably by passing the hotacid flavoring mixture through a double pipe exchanger in which coldwater or the like is employed as a cooling medium, results in areduction of the temperature of acid-flavoring mixture to 70 F. orbelow. The temperature of the flavoring mixture may be as low as 40 F.It should be appreciated that the corrosive effect of the acid-flavoringmixture on the processing equipment is directly proportional to thetemperature of the mixture. Thus, the lower the temperature, the lesserthe corrosive effect of the flavoring mixture. For this reason, coolingoccurs immediately after sterilization of the flavoring mixture andoccurs to as great a degree as is consistent with the equipmentavailable.

The sterilized and cooled base mixture and the cooled sterilizedacid-flavoring mixture are thereafter mixed together. Preferably thismixing occurs by pumping the two stream together. This procedure isoften described as inline mixing. The combined stream is thereaftercooled to a temperature below 120 F. and preferably about 80 F. Thecooled fruit pudding is thereafter aseptically packaged.

The following examples are provided for illustrative purposes only andshould not be construed, in any way, as limiting the scope of theinstant invention, which is defined in the appended claims. It should beclear that various modifications and variations can be made to thedetailed description and the examples without departing from the scopeof the invention.

EXAMPLE 1 A lemon pudding base mixture is prepared by mixing togetherthe following: v

33.0 lbs of 66.5 percent sugar syrup 5.5 lbs starch 0.2 lb of salt 0.25lb of sodium citrate 1.5 lbs vegetable oil a trace amount of coloring55.4 lbs of water.

The mixture is blended, stirred and thereafter preheated in a doublepipe heat exchanger to a temperature of about 145 F. The heated mixtureis next sterilized by injecting steam into a mixture so that the totalmass is at a temperature of about 280 F. for a period of about 60seconds. Immediately after sterilization, the mixture is conveyed into aflash tank in which the mixture is cooled to a temperature of about 145F. and wherein the water resulting from the steam injected into the massis removed.

In a separate processing step 0.45 lb of citric acid 0.95 lb of lemonflavoring and 3.60 lbs of water are mixed together. The mixedacid-flavoring aqueous mixture is heated to a temperature of about 200F. for 30 seconds by direct steam injection. The flavoring mixture isthereafter cooled in a double pipe heat exchanger to a temperature ofabout F.

The sterilized pudding base mixture and the sterilized acid-flavoringmixture are pumped together. The combined fruit pudding mixture isimmediately thereafter cooled to a temperature of about F. andaseptically packaged.

EXAMPLE 2 A pudding base of the same composition as that described inExample 1 is combined with an acid mixture of the same composition asthat described in Example 1, the two together forming a single puddingmixture which is sterilized at a temperature of about 180 F. Thesterilized mixture is thereafter cooled and aseptically canned. Unlikethe results in Example 1, wherein the viscosity was of a suitabletexture, the viscosity in this case was low so that the pudding flowedas a liquid. The desired viscosity of 125,000 centipoises at atemperature of 72 F. after a 48 hour set is not attained in this secondexample. This viscosity criteria is attained in Example 1.

EXAMPLE 3 The same procedure followed in Example 2 is followed in thisexample. However, the starch constituent is increased so that the totalstarch represents 6.9 percent of the total pudding mixture. Theresultant lemon pudding has an improved viscosity over the puddingdescribed in Example 2. However, the viscosity after 48 hours was stillless than one half of the 125,000 centipoise reading obtained when thepudding was processed as in Example 1.

EXAMPLE 4 A strawberry pudding base mixture is prepared in accordancewith the procedure enumerated in Example 1, except that theacid-flavoring mixture comprises:

0.40 lb of citric acid 3.50 lbs of strawberry puree, and

0.10 lb of strawberry flavor.

The resulting strawberry pudding has an acceptable viscosity of about125,000 centipoise at a temperature of 72 F. after a 48-hour set.

What is claimed is:

l. A process for producing a sterile fruit pudding comprising the stepsof:

combining together a pudding base mixture comprising sugar, starch andwater, wherein said starch is in an amount sufficient to provide 3 to7.5 per cent by weight of starch in the fruit pre-heating said basemixture to a temperature in the range of about 120 F to 150 F;

heat sterilizing said pre-heated base mixture;

separately blending an acid-flavoring mixture comprising an edible acid,flavoring ingredients and water, wherein said acid is in an amountsufficient to provide about 0.2 to 1.0 per cent by weight acid in thefruit pudding;

heat sterilizing said acid-flavoring mixture;

combining said base mixture and said acid-flavoring mixture togetherinto a sterile, fruit flavored pudding; and

aseptically canning said fruit pudding.

2. A process in accordance with claim 1 wherein said heat sterilizationof said base mixture comprises steam injection into said mixture so thatsaid mixture attains a temperature in the range of about 250 F to 300 Ffor a period of about I to 300 seconds.

3. A process in accordance with claim 1 wherein said heat sterilizationof said acid-flavoring mixture comprises steam injection into saidmixture so that said mixture reaches a temperature in the range of about180 F to 200 F for a period of about 10 to 300 seconds.

4. A process in accordance with claim 1 wherein said base mixture andsaid flavoring are each separately cooled after sterilization of each ofsaid mixtures.

5. A process in accordance with claim 3 wherein said sterilized andcooled base and flavoring mixtures are combined together by in linemixing of the two mixtUI'CS.

2. A process in accordance with claim 1 wherein said heat sterilizationof said base mixture comprises steam injection into said mixture so thatsaid mixture attains a temperature in the range of about 250* F to 300*F for a period of about 1 to 300 seconds.
 3. A process in accordancewith claim 1 wherein said heat sterilization of said acid-flavoringmixture comprises steam injection into said mixture so that said mixturereaches a temperature in the range of about 180* F to 200* F for aperiod of about 10 to 300 seconds.
 4. A process in accordance with claim1 wherein said base mixture and said flavoring Are each separatelycooled after sterilization of each of said mixtures.
 5. A process inaccordance with claim 3 wherein said sterilized and cooled base andflavoring mixtures are combined together by in line mixing of the twomixtures.